Let There Be Noise

Jazz in the Air | Chapter 11 @Cafe de Paris

(photos by Lina Ejeilat)

Reflections on Chapter 11′s latest Jazz gig
I was privileged to have attended Chapter 11’s latest Jazz gig at Café de Paris with the company of all the good friends.
I have been receiving Yacoub’s invitations for quite a while but I was deterred by life’s off-beats from retreating into its grooves. But the recorded sounds of Jazz that I listen to daily strive to break from monotonous repetition, from continuing to be what it once has been.

Jazz calls for a narrator, an interpreter as it is a novel built in sound; so I headed to Café de Paris last Friday to capture the sound, built into stories by five wonderful musicians.
The first notes struggled to depart from the passive aura of the city, crowdedness and dissimulated noise. They picked up the sounds, played chords and then jumped into modes, built up a melody and suddenly it’s Stan Getz’ Girl from Ipanema! The music pulled the people slowly into its domain, harmony was sensed in the air ruptured with few missed notes every now and then.
The music was soothing, yet doubtful – each had expectations, musicians and audience. Even alcohol had to anticipate the buzzing mood!
The break after first session was a gap for tidying up, it was as if everyone recaptured the moment, revised what has been played and re accumulated their senses and the rest was something else!

My friend asked them to play Cantaloupe Island, a Jazz standard by Herbie Hancock- and there it was breaking from and building back into melody, and at each time it broke to free-formed solos it picked layers of energy, passion and collective vibes lifting it at every verse to a complex state of musical ecstasy!

All I could say is that there was Jazz in the air!
Thanks to Chapter 11 for taking us there- Yacoub, Aram, Shadi, David and Tareq; all the energy, groove and good vibes sent your way!

Join Chapter 11′s Facebook group here
Catch them every Tuesday at Canvas and every Friday at Cafe de Paris!
Join the group for all information, gigs and reservation details!

Underwhelmingly Good | Apple iPad

By hadi alaeddin
Originally Posted On aslittledesign
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iPad is good… Wait, stop wining and let me explain you ingrateful geeks! (This is how Steve Jobs should’ve started his presentation)

Apple launched the iPad yesterday night, never felt geekier as i sat there checking out the live feed on gdgt.com clicking refresh every 30 seconds, stopping on every execs’ statements, and analyzing every picture. I was impressed by how good of a product it is, but it felt funny!

Bear with me on this ok… Now today, I woke up to a new apple homepage, and as usual they followed the keynote with the product showcase video, i thought after watching it, that strange feeling I had yesterday would go away, but still it didn’t.

You can get as much information as you want about the iPad, and all the features in depth, and here is an overview of what the iPad is for those with no idea what we’re talking about here.

But that’s not all what this post is about, this is a collection of my thoughts on why apple will one day rule the world! Oh really? yes really!

So, Two and a half years ago the iPhone was released, five years before that, the iPod, and three years before that was the iMac.

I still remember the hype over the iPhone, as I was still getting into knowing more about industrial design – I majored in 2006 two years after starting college – and in that time it was completely true when they said words like revolutionary, magical, innovative. I watched that video for six months not believing it will be produced until it was released in july 2006, then all hell broke loose.

iPhone, like the iPod and the iMac before it were in fact revolutionary products. They did not only change Apple as a brand, but they literally changed what people thought they need, they changed behavior, instilled loyalty, and gained popularity with people perceiving it as the way cooler, way better looking, way smarter kid that no other kid liked to play with! A show-off they called him! Some kids even called him an elitist, i have no idea where you’ll find a kid say that word but nevermind that!

That’s over-simplification i know but I’ll try to jam in all the info i need to get my point across…

What i mean by changing behavior can be explained by a couple of examples…

You bought an iPod while you have a pc at home, you’ve never used iTunes because you either haven’t heard of it or because you can never find any songs on it, unknown artist being the most dominant artist name in your library! but you don’t care, as long as you have an iPod it doesn’t matter, you can adapt!

Another example. You’ve had a long list of discarded mobile phones, but you’ve never really felt the need to open up your e-mail on those phones, online connection wasn’t that much fun was it, but you get an opportunity to buy an iPhone and suddenly you’re the busy, life on the go, all work no play type, with multiple e-mail accounts, calendar appointments, and to-do list applications installed. You changed, maybe to the worse or maybe to the better, but you changed.
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Now let’s talk about one of the more important things Apple did. As an industrial designer I’m always asked what I do and I always answer based on who is asking and when and why he’s asking… In this case, the definition of design given by the ICSID (international Council of Societies of Industrial Design) fits perfectly.

Design is a creative activity whose aim is to establish the multi-faceted qualities of objects, processes, services and their systems in whole life cycles. Therefore, design is the central factor of innovative humanisation of technologies and the crucial factor of cultural and economic exchange.

Since 1998, Apple has been taking gigantic leaps in innovation, risking massive losses with every new product launch, never compromising, never negotiating terms, and most importantly never disappointing (yes even the apple tv)

It’s now 12 years and Apple is now selling music, movies, applications, ebooks, publishing podcasts, treating software developers very well, and their retail customers better, designing the best accessories, while opening wide opportunities to the infinite amount of third party accessory companies, and doing that at very affordable prices (respectively) and above all that, guaranteeing the best user experience across all mentioned platforms!

“Objects, processes, services and their systems in whole life cycles.”

That’s why after this much growth and change on both ends of the company and the customer, this was the perfect timing for a product like the iPad, a product that’s not necessarily revolutionary in technology or aesthetic, but definitely in it’s positioning. it’s easy to disagree with this but iPad is the product the brings the apple brand to a full circle.

There you have it… I could have ranted and went on and on how un-amazed i was. I could’ve went on about the app icon layout, the big screen smudges, no usb, no camera, no multi-tasking, no new groundbreaking efforts in changing aesthetics, and i definitely could have shortened this post to one sentence that the iPad is a giant iPhone with iWork!… But I didn’t because the iPad is good! even if it is underwhelmingly good for now.

This is what the short-sighted review woul’ve looked like:

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Finally, you have to know by now… Look where the iMac, iPod, and iPhone were back in the day and where they are are now. So far it seems, the iPad might have the biggest prospects of any Apple product ever made! That is definitely worth waiting for!

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While you’re waiting, don’t forget to check out this video, and ask yourself how on earth does Apple think they’d get away with a name like the iPad!?

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Neo-Bullshitters!*

..having been fed “aggressively” for the past few decades; Bourgeois culture and its production and remolding of bourgeois morality somehow lately managed to fuse its self with hippies only to prove there is nothing more sickening than smelly, barefoot, weed-smoking lower-bourgeois hippies other than the neatly-dressed upper-bourgeois bullshitters whose new hobbies, next to shopping, are saving the world and feeding the Africans!

Apparently the most selling merchandise next to weapons, arms, politics, pornography and coke is conscious!

That which is packaged in all sorts of themes; the environmentalist package, the vegetarian, the freedom-of-expression package, the caring-for-the-homeless, the president-on-Oprah package, the world-free-of-smoking, the rescue-the-whales and the leave-Britney-alone package!

Go and light a cigarette for all its worth because to build your stupid Hybrid a fucking god-scale factory is built in east-asia with abused workers whose annual income don’t match to your “Save-the-World” bumper sticker – and when that worker rests to light a cigarette you won’t let him so he won’t harm your health!

* this is not intended to ‘enlighten’ anyone in anyway, deliver any idea nor ‘stimulate’ anyone to think! But it is only a public deceleration of refusal!

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“Bourgeois democracy is democracy of pompous phrases, solemn words, exuberant promises and the high-sounding slogans of freedom and equality. But, in fact, it screens the non-freedom and inferiority of women, the non-freedom and inferiority of the toilers and exploited.“

Operation Swiss 2.0: Public Design Activity @Rainbow St

[Communication]
We’ve lately realized many of Interruptions activities create mass-confusion.
This surely is not intentional even though it’s enjoyable- but confusion is naturally the side-effect of putting together designers taking on topics from design culture, cities, people, things, building, society and politics and then do projects and label them Bananas, Power, Catatonia or the Swiss Operation!
All of which are exercised within ‘underground’ circles at a network structured merely as an Illuminati order-!

Our communication methods grew complex and our solid on-paper documentation is nowhere to be found for those who are eager to put their hands on it as a thousand and five hundred copies of Banana Edition were distributed personally without a copy at a store or bookshop!

Possibilities of building organized methods of communication seem distant! So for now we’re aiming at intensifying activities so that Interruptions can grow familiarity which enables people to become both recipients and creative mediums of spreading an interruptionist culture. (pretty optimistic!)

[Operation Swiss 2.0]
The Swiss Operation is a design exercise Interruptions team was commissioned for by owners of Swiss Café and Patisserie- Located at the gates of Rainbow street, Swiss is recognized by many Ammanis since it first opened in 1966 for serving the most delicious cheesecakes!

Operation Swiss 2.0

(find more pictures of Swiss sessions here.
Photo album will be updated weekly.)

[Swiss 2.0: Aims]
The exercise aims at maximizing Swiss’ potentials in-and-beyond the 4-table space, reintroduce brand, engage with Rainbow Street’s development and contribute values to local café culture.

Throughout the exercise we’ll be testing Design’s ability to assist small businesses, experiment with methods to encourage suggested hybrid behavior and promote the concept of public and interactive design activity.

[Public Design Activity]
An Interruptionist design team made up of architects and product designers carries out the exercise that’s divided to phases stretching between weekly sessions held at Swiss. A documentation process follows each of the sessions and a weekly report will be posted on Interruptions blog and the operation’s workspace on Interruptions’ network. Visitors of Swiss, as well as friends, viewers and readers can all interact throughout the design process, attend design sessions, join workspace and send comments or feedback. A public presentation will be held at Swiss once design is finalized.

Visitors and customers of Swiss are already interacting by adding to the notes we’ve posted on the walls.

Dr. Ziyad Haddad of Design faculty at the Yarmouk University joined one of our sessions and many guests will be invited later on at late design phases.

(We’re looking forward to receiving your comments and feedback to our weekly reports.)

Operation Swiss 2.0 – Intro

“Love Died” on a Wall in Amman!

Written by Khaled Sedki for WAW Al Balad
To be released in WAW’s Issue/8.

And wall said: Khaled, love died!

A wall once told me, as I walked by it, that love died; “Khaled, mat al-hob!”
It knew my name, so I guess it was addressing me personally.
Walls usually tell us a lot of stuff; to vote for the wrong people, to buy things we don’t need or to rent apartments. Some walls gossip about who loves who ‘forever’, what sports-club the kids of the neighborhood are fans of, or simply threatens anyone who attempts to ‘piss’ next to them.
But this wall specifically wanted to let me know that “love is dead”, as if it was a sequel to Nietzsche’s old announcement, yet the latter at least bothered to offer an explanation!
I looked around the wall, even the other side of the wall and all the walls of the neighborhood to find any further details on how, when or why love has died. Whether it was murdered, or simply died of cancer or perhaps aids! But that’s all there is! None of the kids around the area have seen the dying love, or heard about its tragic death, but they all believe it is dead, and none of them seemed to be bothered by that ‘fact’.

Walls talk to us; with our words- I prefer graffiti-sprayed walls to neat bourgeoisie-guarding fences.
Words on the walls are like riddles, solving them is decoding a culture through its own spontaneous, irrational and collective means of expression and reproduction of its self, its values and its symbols.
So try reading walls, writing or even commenting on them! True you can’t post links, videos or pictures on city walls like you do on Facebook walls, but these walls are not virtual, they’re not limited to ‘friends’ and at least they don’t feature Google ads!

Walls are urban canvases that bare our traces, whether carved, designed or built; they are a way of urban communication found by cave-men and lost for the polished image of sexy tourism.
Words spoken on a wall are there to stay, even if painted over; they remain in a wall’s memory, layers of brick, concrete, words and paint. Hammurabi’s codes, anarchist propaganda, Pharaoh’s history and Greek wisdom were all written on walls, and if love truly died, then you first read it on a wall in Amman.